Page:Autobiography of an Androgyne 1918 book scan.djvu/64

34 of the world has its girl-boy, so far as my wide observation goes. After a life extending over nearly half a century and spent in many countries of the world, it is my own careful estimate that approximately one physical male in three hundred is born with this nature.

Physicians possibly have not discovered inverts in such numbers: First, because the majority of the medical profession have been in almost entire ignorance of the existence of this variety of the genus homo, and have therefore neglected to search around for them; and secondly, because of the fact that through humanity's misunderstanding and persecution of them, these inverts hide their idiosyncrasies and secret practices as no other class of mankind. They can be discovered only by careful search, and recognized only by those having an intimate knowledge of the invert's character and habits. They are often unsuspected even by their own families.

In a class of fifty boys in a school, there was one passive invert. In another class of forty, there were two. In a club of thirty young men, there were two. In an office-staff of fourteen, there were two. In a community of twelve hundred inhabitants, six were known to your author. Havelock Ellis has stated that among the professional and most cultured classes of England, the number of "homosexualists"— which term includes active pederasts as well as passive inverts—may rise as high as one in twenty. Moll has stated that he knew of from 850 to 1,050 in Berlin alone, which would make the ratio one to every 1,666 inhabitants. Of course Moll could